Fidel and Raúl Castro Win, of Course, but Raúl Wins Bigger

HAVANA (AP) — Acting President Raúl Castro was the top vote-getter in Cuban parliamentary elections, winning by one percentage point over his older brother, Fidel, according to official results issued Wednesday.

The brothers easily won re-election to the legislature, the National Assembly of People’s Power, as did all of the candidates presented to the more than eight million voters. The election was held Jan. 20.

Bespectacled, camera-shy and far less charismatic than Cuba’s ailing longtime leader, Raúl Castro, 76, received 99.4 percent of votes cast in Santiago de Cuba, the family’s base in the country’s east.

Mr. Castro, who is also defense minister, bested his brother in the 2005 parliamentary vote, too, getting 99.75 percent, compared with Fidel’s 99.01.

The 614 unopposed candidates needed to get at least half the votes cast in their districts, and all received more than enough. The lowest figure, 73 percent, went to Bárbaro Osmani Lago, from Pinar del Río Province.

Officials said 95 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, though about 4.5 percent turned in blank or invalid ballots. While voting is not mandatory, failing to vote can draw unwanted attention from pro-government neighborhood organizations.

There was only one choice for each office, and organized campaigning was forbidden.

While far less prominent globally than his brother, Raúl Castro has long been popular in eastern Cuba, playing up his rural roots and down-home sense of humor. Some Cubans consider him more pragmatic than his visionary brother.

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The younger Castro has been governing Cuba since his brother underwent emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 and provisionally ceded power.

Despite his illness, the elder Castro, 81, remains head of the Council of State, Cuba’s supreme governing body. The new Parliament convenes Feb. 24 and will choose a new council from its members. The council will then select the president. Fidel Castro has not said whether he wants to remain head of state.

In an essay published Wednesday, the elder Castro said President Bush reached a low point in “demagoguery, lies and total lack of ethics” in his State of the Union address on Monday.

“For a population that knows how to read, write and think, nobody can offer a more elegant criticism of the empire than Bush himself,” Mr. Castro wrote. “Empire” is a term Cuban officials often use for the United States.

Mr. Castro wrote that the war in Afghanistan “was the same thing that the U.S.S.R. wanted to do, occupy the country with its powerful armed forces that were ultimately defeated when they ran into its customs, religion and cultural differences.”

He also said that Mr. Bush had used the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as an excuse to invade Iraq, and that “no one in the world doubts the objective was to occupy oil installations.” The war “has cost that country’s people hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced from their homes.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Fidel and Raúl Castro Win, of Course, but Raúl Wins Bigger. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe